MiSTer FPGA Forum

Gyruss wrote: ↑Mon Sep 27, 2021 6:51 pm I`ve got both Namco Classic collections 1 and 2 in my private collection, I did sent Jotego some great pcb`s in Spain like R-Type, Pacmania, Demons World, Hyper Olympics, Raiden 2 etc. but to sent these would be to much for me since these are very rare and also expensive.. but maybe someone else from this community is so kind to donate these...

lamarax wrote: ↑Tue Sep 28, 2021 7:13 pm

Gyruss wrote: ↑Mon Sep 27, 2021 6:51 pm I`ve got both Namco Classic collections 1 and 2 in my private collection, I did sent Jotego some great pcb`s in Spain like R-Type, Pacmania, Demons World, Hyper Olympics, Raiden 2 etc. but to sent these would be to much for me since these are very rare and also expensive.. but maybe someone else from this community is so kind to donate these...

Gyruss you're a treasure. I bet many in the community haven't yet realized the importance of your contribution.

That said, I don't think physical boards are required to be at hand in each case, unless some of their chips need to be decapped. Jotego doesn't do that, he wants schematics.

So please keep your most precious boards; their sacrifice would be unavailing.

jotego wrote: ↑Thu Sep 30, 2021 6:54 am Schematics are rarely available. I collect all I can find on the internet as PDF files. I also buy the ones I find on eBay. But, they are still uncommon. For most arcade games, if you want the schematics, you have to create them yourself using the actual PCB. You can see the schematics I made for Exed Exes from the PCB here. So PCBs are necessary for most games.

For games for which there are schematics available, PCBs are still needed to verify them. It happens quite often that the schematics do not match the final PCB version. I have seen wrong connections in the schematics of 1942, MX5000 and Konami's Kicker; to name a few.

Then, most original PCBs contain custom chips for which original schematics may not even provide pin names. So these chips are big black boxes. Having the PCB sometimes is enough to find out what they do in a faithful way. A successful story about this is the CPS-A chip in CPS hardware. I was able to correctly implement the complex DMA feature of this chip by taking direct measurements without decapping the chip.

Sometimes, we need to crack open a chip to extract its information by taking die shots. This means breaking the chip and potentially breaking the PCB. This is one of the reasons why I want PCB donations, not loans: because a loan limits how far we can go with it.

Gyrrus sent me a few expensive boards to work on. I am extracting schematics from them and we will see the first core based on Gyrrus' boards in a few months. Thanks, Gyrrus!

Minpin wrote: ↑Thu Jan 20, 2022 9:32 am @Gyrrus you must understand that it takes time. It's not just getting it and tomorrow there is a core. If it's that easy why don't you make the cores? You have a very short sighted mentality.

Gyruss wrote: ↑Wed Jan 19, 2022 8:00 pm Well this post is from 30 September... so that is almost 4 months ago and still no sign of any of my boards I have sent you... I understand that it always takes more time then you expected but still a little disapointed to wait so long..

Minpin wrote: ↑Thu Jan 20, 2022 9:32 am @Gyrrus you must understand that it takes time. It's not just getting it and tomorrow there is a core. If it's that easy why don't you make the cores? You have a very short sighted mentality.

jca wrote: ↑Sat Feb 12, 2022 9:06 pm Jotego do an excellent job with arcade cores but embarks in too many projects. I think he was planning to do it after the Sega 16 system which has been taking a long time and still have 2 games with bugs while he is developing other single arcades and the NeoGeo Pocket. I suspect the problem lies with his patrons asking for specific cores and being patrons he obliges. May be he should tell them he also has some loaners and has to give them priority. May be someone should remind him on his Twitter account.

LamerDeluxe wrote: ↑Sun Feb 13, 2022 8:30 am What's with the bashing of people graciously donating expensive hardware which every MiSTer user will benefit from eventually.

MostroW wrote: ↑Sun Feb 13, 2022 5:58 pm

LamerDeluxe wrote: ↑Sun Feb 13, 2022 8:30 am What's with the bashing of people graciously donating expensive hardware which every MiSTer user will benefit from eventually.

Too many people believing they can demand stuff from people who donate or do all the work.
The only input they have is "I want this" or "You need to do / solve this"

Kannibal wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 1:58 am I apologize for starting a troublesome thread.

Would love to see classics like Pac Man Arrangement on the MiSTer. It's the definitive version of the game IMO.

I wrote the original MAME driver for this hardware (note I didn't implement the rotation used in Galaga Arrangement - is it even there now?) I own the Vol 1 PCB and had the SMT graphics ROMs removed temporarily so they could be dumped. Someone else dumped the Vol 2 ROMs.

The graphics processor is the Yamaha YGV-608 - a multi-layer scrolling tilemap and sprite engine. I also obtained this manual from Yamaha in order to write the MAME driver. I have since scanned it and made it available to MAMEDEV many many years ago.

I have written a bunch of (admittedly simpler) cores also many years ago before MiSTer existed. A few of them have been ported by others to MiSTer since (and a few notably haven't, like Juno First). My approach was not to require the schematics, but rather based on a functional description that could be gleaned from the MAME source. You could argue not 100% accurate, but at least something playable until someone does an implementation based directly off the schematics. In the case of the Namco-ND1 hardware, there's not a lot to it aside from the 68K and the YGV-608 anyway, so hard to get it wrong I guess.

I haven't done any FPGA implementations of retro stuff for probably 10 years now as my job has moved more towards software in recent years. However I've recently been working on FPGAs again and was considering tackling another, more complex core on MiSTer. Being familiar with the hardware, Namco ND-1 might be a good project to start on and also cut my teeth on the MiSTer framework. My other thought was Xybots, likely based on the existing Gauntlet MiSTer core?!?

tcdev wrote: ↑Mon Nov 20, 2023 12:51 pm

I wrote the original MAME driver for this hardware (note I didn't implement the rotation used in Galaga Arrangement - is it even there now?) I own the Vol 1 PCB and had the SMT graphics ROMs removed temporarily so they could be dumped. Someone else dumped the Vol 2 ROMs.

The graphics processor is the Yamaha YGV-608 - a multi-layer scrolling tilemap and sprite engine. I also obtained this manual from Yamaha in order to write the MAME driver. I have since scanned it and made it available to MAMEDEV many many years ago.

I have written a bunch of (admittedly simpler) cores also many years ago before MiSTer existed. A few of them have been ported by others to MiSTer since (and a few notably haven't, like Juno First). My approach was not to require the schematics, but rather based on a functional description that could be gleaned from the MAME source. You could argue not 100% accurate, but at least something playable until someone does an implementation based directly off the schematics. In the case of the Namco-ND1 hardware, there's not a lot to it aside from the 68K and the YGV-608 anyway, so hard to get it wrong I guess.

I haven't done any FPGA implementations of retro stuff for probably 10 years now as my job has moved more towards software in recent years. However I've recently been working on FPGAs again and was considering tackling another, more complex core on MiSTer. Being familiar with the hardware, Namco ND-1 might be a good project to start on and also cut my teeth on the MiSTer framework. My other thought was Xybots, likely based on the existing Gauntlet MiSTer core?!?

Namco ND-1 would be badass! Would love to be able to play PAC-Man Arrangement on a real arcade cabinet via MiSTercade!

tcdev wrote: ↑Mon Nov 20, 2023 12:51 pm

I wrote the original MAME driver for this hardware (note I didn't implement the rotation used in Galaga Arrangement - is it even there now?) I own the Vol 1 PCB and had the SMT graphics ROMs removed temporarily so they could be dumped. Someone else dumped the Vol 2 ROMs.

The graphics processor is the Yamaha YGV-608 - a multi-layer scrolling tilemap and sprite engine. I also obtained this manual from Yamaha in order to write the MAME driver. I have since scanned it and made it available to MAMEDEV many many years ago.

I have written a bunch of (admittedly simpler) cores also many years ago before MiSTer existed. A few of them have been ported by others to MiSTer since (and a few notably haven't, like Juno First). My approach was not to require the schematics, but rather based on a functional description that could be gleaned from the MAME source. You could argue not 100% accurate, but at least something playable until someone does an implementation based directly off the schematics. In the case of the Namco-ND1 hardware, there's not a lot to it aside from the 68K and the YGV-608 anyway, so hard to get it wrong I guess.

I haven't done any FPGA implementations of retro stuff for probably 10 years now as my job has moved more towards software in recent years. However I've recently been working on FPGAs again and was considering tackling another, more complex core on MiSTer. Being familiar with the hardware, Namco ND-1 might be a good project to start on and also cut my teeth on the MiSTer framework. My other thought was Xybots, likely based on the existing Gauntlet MiSTer core?!?

Thank you for your contributions to preservation! This is important to me, and I'm personally of the opinion that the experience being preserved is more important than nothing being preserved, but of course the more accurate we can get, the better.

tcdev wrote: ↑Mon Nov 20, 2023 12:51 pm

I wrote the original MAME driver for this hardware (note I didn't implement the rotation used in Galaga Arrangement - is it even there now?) I own the Vol 1 PCB and had the SMT graphics ROMs removed temporarily so they could be dumped. Someone else dumped the Vol 2 ROMs.

The graphics processor is the Yamaha YGV-608 - a multi-layer scrolling tilemap and sprite engine. I also obtained this manual from Yamaha in order to write the MAME driver. I have since scanned it and made it available to MAMEDEV many many years ago.

I have written a bunch of (admittedly simpler) cores also many years ago before MiSTer existed. A few of them have been ported by others to MiSTer since (and a few notably haven't, like Juno First). My approach was not to require the schematics, but rather based on a functional description that could be gleaned from the MAME source. You could argue not 100% accurate, but at least something playable until someone does an implementation based directly off the schematics. In the case of the Namco-ND1 hardware, there's not a lot to it aside from the 68K and the YGV-608 anyway, so hard to get it wrong I guess.

I haven't done any FPGA implementations of retro stuff for probably 10 years now as my job has moved more towards software in recent years. However I've recently been working on FPGAs again and was considering tackling another, more complex core on MiSTer. Being familiar with the hardware, Namco ND-1 might be a good project to start on and also cut my teeth on the MiSTer framework. My other thought was Xybots, likely based on the existing Gauntlet MiSTer core?!?

I am so glad I made this thread and look forward to your further contributions towards preserving these specific Namco games which; to my knowledge, don't get enough exposure.

tcdev wrote: ↑Mon Nov 20, 2023 12:51 pm

I wrote the original MAME driver for this hardware (note I didn't implement the rotation used in Galaga Arrangement - is it even there now?) I own the Vol 1 PCB and had the SMT graphics ROMs removed temporarily so they could be dumped. Someone else dumped the Vol 2 ROMs.

The graphics processor is the Yamaha YGV-608 - a multi-layer scrolling tilemap and sprite engine. I also obtained this manual from Yamaha in order to write the MAME driver. I have since scanned it and made it available to MAMEDEV many many years ago.

I have written a bunch of (admittedly simpler) cores also many years ago before MiSTer existed. A few of them have been ported by others to MiSTer since (and a few notably haven't, like Juno First). My approach was not to require the schematics, but rather based on a functional description that could be gleaned from the MAME source. You could argue not 100% accurate, but at least something playable until someone does an implementation based directly off the schematics. In the case of the Namco-ND1 hardware, there's not a lot to it aside from the 68K and the YGV-608 anyway, so hard to get it wrong I guess.

I haven't done any FPGA implementations of retro stuff for probably 10 years now as my job has moved more towards software in recent years. However I've recently been working on FPGAs again and was considering tackling another, more complex core on MiSTer. Being familiar with the hardware, Namco ND-1 might be a good project to start on and also cut my teeth on the MiSTer framework. My other thought was Xybots, likely based on the existing Gauntlet MiSTer core?!?

Firstly, thanks for your contribution to arcade preservation; great work!

Secondly, Xybots would be amazing. I absolutely love that game.

I've started work on emulating Namco Classics, or more precisely, Namco ND1. I'm starting with the YGV608 in Verilator. The datasheet and application manual for the YGV608 have a block diagram of the chip and there's quite a bit of technical information in the application manual so I think it'll be possible to do a fairly accurate implementation from them.

It's going to take me a while as I come up to speed on the MiSTer framework (having never done a core on MiSTer before), the Verilator set-up for MiSTer and Verilator itself, and also writing in Verilog as opposed to VHDL. But looking forward to the challenge!

Great news!